Understanding the "Why" of any initiative should be a key step prior to implementation. Without a clear understanding of our "Why" how are we to judge the success of what we are implementing. How will we know which steps take us in the right direction if we have no concept of why we are journeying. In our implementation of ICT (Information & Communication Technologies) and now Digital Technologies, a lack of clarity on the matter of "Why" has often been the most significant challenge to success.

Our learners will never now a world where Digital Technologies are not the norm. Using solutions developed within this space and with this mindset is already their normal. Unless they are to be slaves to this technology we must also empower them to be creators of digital solutions. To do this we must begin with recognising the challenges that a curriculum built around mastery of Digital Technologies brings to our teachers and seek to understand the supports they require.

Asked to assess their students' performance on nine specific writing skills, teachers tended to rate their students "good" or "fair" as opposed to "excellent" or "very good." Students received the best ratings on their ability to "effectively organize and structure writing assignments" and their ability to "understand and consider multiple viewpoints on a particular topic or issue." Teachers gave students the lowest ratings when it comes to "navigating issues of fair use and copyright in composition" and "reading and digesting long or complicated texts."

SweetSearch came about as the byproduct of making findingDulcinea, an aggregator that terms itself the "Librarian of the Internet." It's a database of about 35,000 web sites vetted by researchers, librarians, and teachers, with priority given to spots like the Library of Congress, Smithsonian, and other public and academic sources. It sweeps away the pseudo-science, forums, and sites that read like paraphrased summaries.

It’s now become so incredibly complex and enmeshed, that each of us now has access to EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON THE PLANET in less than 6 steps. Even with billions of people on the planet, we can reach literally anyone in 6 steps. That means we can access anyone’s resources in 6 steps. Their skills, their knowledge, their capital, their influence. Any resource.

ANET in less than 6 steps. Even with billions of people on the planet, we can reach literally anyone in 6 steps. That means we can access anyone’s resources in 6 steps. Their skills, their knowledge, their capital, their influence. Any resource.

My strength is the ability to see patterns.
It’s what enabled me to write this post. People call me “insightful.” I have the ability to see stuff that other people don’t see, even when it’s staring them right in the face. (I’ve been calling this process “metathinking,”

What I did was go to Listorious.com. I looked at all the Top Lists that were interesting to me, and started following every single person who I thought I could learn from. That means I looked through their tweetstream to see if it was filled with potentially useful links to info, and I also clicked through to their personal website.

This takes effort and time. It’s work. And it’s unpaid.
So why on Earth would you waste your time doing this?
Because something interesting happens when you start sending people links to information that they can turn around and apply in the real world,

Turns out, we’re all actually in this together, all trying to figure out a way that we can all utilize our strengths, connect, collaborate, and survive. If helping each other and building trust is the way to make it work, let’s make it work.

What happens when your entire organization of people, as a unit, is a network in itself, but each person also has their personal networks of relationships to draw on, which extend beyond the organization?

The world will keep moving. It’s accelerating at an accelerating rate. The ONLY WAY to deal with it is not to cling to the old hierarchies and silos and pride and egos. We have to understand that we can only deal with this as a fully connected system.
And the really crazy part is: we already have everything we need to make this happen. It’s already in place.

A missing element, in my view, is a simple way for participants to tangibly contribute to the growth of the network. I would love to see a curated version of Pledgebank.org woven into blogs like EBD, where ideas for enhancing the network could be proposed.
These crowdfunding/crowdsourcing elements might spark donations of funds and time to enrich the commons and help the network to grow.

Systems – biological, social and economic – are driven by avoiding risk and moving forward. Moving forward is life – no choice. Avoiding risk is the constraints and dangers of the environment – no choice. But life does make a choice.

EduComics is an European Union Comenius education project under the Life Long Learning Programme. It will show educators how online comics can be used in the classroom to enhance learning, engage and motivate students, and use technology in a practical and effective way. The project will create training material for teachers and organise seminars for teachers in Greece, Cyprus, UK, Italy and Spain.

European Union Comenius education project showing educators how digital comics can be used in the classroom to enhance learning, engage and motivate students, and use technology in a practical and effective way.

His dream is to have a laptop computer in the hands of every student. While he's not quite there yet, Paul Bogush has come very close using the resources at his disposal.
For Bogush, the use of technology has become the backbone of instruction. The Moran Middle School teacher was awarded a spot at the Google Teacher Academy last month, but was already immersed in the Web's free portals to engage his eighth grade class and prepare students to communicate in a digital world.

Digital Portfolios Made Easy is a portfolio system developed by Dr. Leigh E. Zeitz and Andrew E. Krumm. It provides a system for presenting digital portfolios that is complete but simple.
The growing interest in electronic and digital portfolios has created opportunities for practitioners to present portfolios that are more rich and interconnected than the traditional notebook professional portfolio. The greatest obstacle to creating digital portfolios, however, can be the practitioner's perception of the technology itself. The technology does not need to be overly complicated, and the goal of DPME is to make the process as transparent and intuitive as possible. The DPME templates provide a framework within which to build a standards-based, individualized professional portfolio. The DPME templates are provided in two formats, Word and HTML. These two formats allow practitioners of all skill levels to use software that most already have on their computers.